image: mr ruffles 

What everyone wants from life is continued and genuine happiness - Baruch Spinoza 

Someone asked me, reasonably so, why I thought I was singularly and uniquely qualified to get on my soapbox about happiness. Have you ever been asked a question that resonates with you? One that seems to burrow beneath the subcutaneous layers of your awareness?

This one did it for me. I had a ‘who the hell do I think I am?’ moment. I suppose I was presented with two options at that point. Throw in the towel and shuffle off to hide under a rock or push on and persist.

I don’t think I am singularly and uniquely qualified to wax lyrical any more than the next person. I do consider myself well placed to be a pundit on the game of life having met with both triumph and disaster, and having been kicked in the teeth and catapulted to the lofty heights in my time thus far. I have little doubt that the continued unfolding of my life’s odyssey will present more ignominy, tragedy, magic, fulfilment and dynamic growth as it proceeds.

I came up with a category called ‘Biog. stuff’ which is short for biographical stuff - you see, always thinking, always planning (lol). An opportunity for me to substantiate my position via some of the narrative of my life. More than anything I want to offer something to those who feel at times a little overwhelmed or perhaps under-qualified to tackle those obstacles that they find in their path.

The Mechanics of Happiness, it’s actually a series of six books that I’ve written, came about as I pondered the fundamental nature of what we want. I saw that people want happiness; not a glitzy, sugar coated fantasy but sustained, deep and meaningful happiness. A quality that is unique to each individual because of the unique way in which we are all assembled.

I saw also that there are many barriers to achieving happiness that interfere with the smooth evolution of our own being, often in the form of external factors that we had little or nothing to do with that become like grit in our character  development. In the blog I tend to keep my powder dry, when I master the technology I will publish some book extracts here, and some people have reflected to me that they haven’t got a clue what this blog is about but find it nevertheless interesting or compelling. It’s all good. It’s all ingredients that go into the pot.

Look out for postings or pages marked ‘Biog. stuff’, keep the feedback coming. I find it extraordinary when people comment in whatever way. And to those of you who’ve said you find me a little daunting, don’t make me laugh, I’m just a kid who went on a few dates with the English language and found I was in love with her. To paraphrase Jim Royle, ’Daunting? My arse!’  

image: crabby7

To those of you kind enough to send suggestions on how to improve my blog, thank you. To the gentleman from Venezuela who suggested that I shoot myself, I am glad that my humble opinions touched the latent Harry Callahan in you.

To the imaginative lady from New Hampshire, I am extremely flattered but unfortunately it is impractical.

Onwards and upwards.

image: haani

Success is a pejorative word. It’s like normal or good, it can mean a million things to a million people. Here’s a simple call over that I use when assessing the merits of any given situation or person.

It’s not about where you are, it’s about where you’ve come from.

Simple really. For some the word success conjures images of penthouses in the hottest property spots, owning a tropical island paradise, driving the latest and greatest supercar and attending the coolest events on the social circuit.

Of course for most of us that is a world that we don’t engage directly with and it’s more likely that the characteristics of success are relative and more subjective. As another potential famine hits another unstable African country, success is a bowl of rice. For a junkie in rehab or any substance addict, success is another day without falling off the wagon.

To make your life a success is to refine the components of what gives rise to happiness. Often it is small things, those events that are life affirming, the touch of a loved one, a smile from a stranger, spontaneous outpourings of mirth, good conversation along the way.

Part of the mechanics is to have clearly defined goals and a clearly defined strategy of how you can achieve those goals. Stay in what’s real. Don’t miss out any of the intervening stages between where you are now and where you want to be. The journey of where you are has been paved with multiple successes along the way, many of which you may know little or nothing about. Be settled to the fact that your life is a supported and maintained occurrence within a magical symphony of happenings.

Remember, what matters is where you’ve come from, that defines the person you are far more significantly than the person you want to be. Where you want to be is an objective, a journey yet to come and an aspiration. Fantastic and a massive ‘YES!’ to all those things, but reality exists within what is and what has already been. Your success is already defined by the fact of your reading this which indicates multiple accomplishments already.

Look out and around and at what is. Think of where you have come from, that is a measure of success.  

image: donna deestea

I am the funniest person you will ever meet.

Give me the opportunity and I will have you crying with laughter and begging for mercy because your sides ache that much. You don’t believe me? You should.

I come from a long line of stand up comedians.

The thing that has enabled me to endure is being able to see the funny side of things. I look at our world, I listen to people and I have to take it all with a pinch of salt. Some people take themselves too seriously, and I do include myself in that po faced band but fortunately for me it is an occasional affliction. You have to chill once in a while.

Why not?

image: jwhiting99 

Pursue a worthy objective.

Set yourself a task that you can never accomplish.

Follow a path that has no end.

Spend your time wisely, it is the only true currency.

Love what you do and do what you love.

Surround yourself with people who support your objectives.

Give of yourself, sometimes, without counting the cost.

Everything returns to the source of its arising, what do you issue into the world?

All progress is tapered, don’t expect the impossible but demand the best of yourself.

image: adventurous wench

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal - Arthur Schopenhauer 

Paradoxically, the one constant in life is change. Nothing stays still, everything is in flux.

We are at a pivotal time in history, there are periods when it moves slowly and there are periods of acceleration. The acceleration comes at the beginning and end of particular cycles, phases or epochs. It’s to do with octave changes.

The order that we have become accustomed to in our lives is shifting. Events do, from time to time, catch up with and overtake our perceptions. This is when there is shock, tumult, social disorder and even revolution. We live in interesting times.

Take the pinnacle of any civilization you know of, from the Romans to the Mayans (that’s one of their cities above) and mostly it would have been inconceivable to the people of that civilization that it would end. Yet they do, they pass. The jungles of the planet are dotted with the remnants of once great cities. Where once thriving cultures existed and dramas played out, dreams fulfilled, ambitions thwarted there are now forgotten ruins.

There are no guarantees about our culture. It exhibits no special characteristics that give it immunity from such things. There are even those who hold the view that our culture’s demise would be a good thing. Consider Winston Churchill who was acutely aware of democracy’s shortcomings but realised that it was the best available system of government. Look at the alternatives, oligarchy such as in post Soviet Russia, Islamist systems such as the Taliban still sniffing around Afghanistan, totalitarian regimes that wish to get inside the minds of their populations and police their thinking. This blog is unlikely to be read in China.

So while our culture is not without imperfection, what would you have in its place? It allows a degree of freedom of thinking and seeks to propagate a system of personal liberties that empower the individual to pursue their own path. These are massively important things. I do not defend all that we do, I see the condition of many of our citizens and their severely curtailed or diminished horizons and I see there is work to be done. But crucially I see there is optimism too.

We have something worth upholding that has freed us of the dogmas of theocracy, the terrors of totalitarianism. Yet familiarity may expose the fragility of that which we have in our grasp, the freedom to think and do as we choose. Of course it brings responsibility and I believe that it is the responsibility of each of us to cherish and value these things and to make it our business to develop as far as we possibly can in order to colonise the darkness of ignorance.

The saying goes, ‘you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone’. we do not realise where we are, the fortune that graces us all. Major shifts are beginning, our reliance upon fossil fuels is going to be seriously compromised and the world we have come to accept as the norm will have to change if it is to have any chance of survival. These are not wild eyed premonitions, they are simply the foregone conclusions of the law of supply and demand.

China and India, or as economists call them ‘Chindia’, are growing at a remarkable pace, in economic terms, and they require huge resources to sustain their growth. We in the developed world can only watch as resources we had almost exclusive access to are being demanded by a new consumer. Fossil fuels are finite, oil and coal will run out eventually and the pace of this will increase as more of the world’s population claim a place at the table of plenty.

Why is this relevant to happiness? As the constraints upon our system of doing things in the developed world increase, essentially through such things as inflation, the mechanisms of monetary control, decreased spending power there will be greater unrest among the populations of the developed world. There will, inevitably, be scapegoats, social cohesion will break down in various ways and there will be a clamour for change.

Change is inevitable but it has to be an enlightened change as opposed to the revolutionary fervour that rips everything up and starts again only to create a different structure that never fulfils its promise and abandons the best of what it has replaced. Unhappiness may be perceived as the absence of certainty and in uncertain times this will be a feature; people will become more distressed as they try to make sense of the events they see unfolding. The huge leaps that have occurred since the Industrial Revolution have been driven by fossil fuels and that will have to change, it’s simply no longer sustainable.

In evolutionary terms this has been a roller coaster ride but a short one. Human societies have existed in recorded history for tens of thousands of years and this current wave will pass just as Egypt, Babylon, Sumeria and the Moghul Empires passed.

Where are you in all this? You who read this now and can only feel very small and insignificant, surely, in the face of such considerations. Well, here’s the most remarkable thing of all - where our societies, cultures and civilizations flounder upon the rocky coastline of change, the one constant is us. All of these lost civilizations with their learning, wisdom, skills and technologies were created by people. Humans adapt, societies do not and are discarded.

There are huge opportunities for human growth and development at this time. It’s a little like passing through a birth canal, there is both opportunity and risk involved but ultimately there is only one way to go. Ground yourself in things that are permanent, things that are temporary will evaporate like dew in the morning sun.

It is a little frightening but also incredibly challenging, it will stretch those who emerge from the coming transition and leave them as the beneficiaries of a remarkable event in human history. What has happened in the past century and the post war era has been without precedent, that unprecedented change continues and a completely different world awaits us.

Do not forget those things that are important. Do not abandon the things that have helped us emerge blinking into the light. It is a time to leap into the unknown with the certainty that we have the nascent genius necessary to create something remarkable.       

image: fuelli 

Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination - Immanuel Kant

Consider being born here with every opportunity that presents itself. What is your greatest joy? What is the source from which you derive the greatest satisfaction? Here are a few informal pointers.

Try to treat every situation as if it were brand new.

Familiarity is a big hurdle to overcome if you allow it to take root in your attitude. Every person you ever meet has their dreams and their hopes. They have their desires whether they have been able to fulfil them or not. Every situation has its potential outcomes that are dashed upon the rocks of familiarity. Expect more, expect better, from yourself and from others. That is not a licence for tyranny it is a disposition advisory. What you invest in something is what you can expect to receive from it, the something here is your life and all that it entails. If you want extraordinary things then you must lead an extraordinary life, do not fall into the trap of thinking that simply because you are you there is an entitlement.

When I find myself in need of a new perspective I summon the state of being a stranger in a strange land. What does this mean? Have you been to a foreign country, with a culture, language, social structure and a frequency quite different to what you are accustomed to? Everything is different and you see it through the eyes of one who is an outsider because you are not soaked in the provenance of what has brought that state of affairs about. You are, in a sense, immune to its luggage or history.

As such you can have insight into things and see them as they actually are without having to process the accompanying baggage through your filters. In time you become imbued with some of the local character and you lose that freshness of perspective and the initial clear vision dissipates.

The initial freshness is the perspective to get. How do you do this? The method is a form of self modelling. You must feel how you felt when you were aware of being in a place you had no history with. In order to reconnect with that state ask yourself, what did it feel like, what did you notice about yourself within it, how did you react? The best way to be is completely impartial, when in the state of objectivity you are able to see things as close to how they actually are as it is possible to see them. There is a childlike quality to what you see, stripped bare of cynicism, ennui and the great stifler: familiarity.

Turn that vision on to your own circumstance or situation from time to time and you will get far greater insight into what you are doing than if you treat your life with disregard. The same is true for other people, other situations and the places you discover yourself in. Walk along the avenues of your life with the perception of a stranger at times and see how it makes you feel. Imagine it were brand new and this was your first encounter with it.

Attitude is everything

The single most important factor in your life is attitude. Anything can be dealt with, disease, pestilence, outrageous fortune - these things are all manageable, the crucial factor is attitude. You define your own world. You create the reality that you engage with and this is circumscribed by the attitude you bring to bear upon anything. What you deal with is almost circumstantial, it is how you deal with it that gives definition to who and what you are.

Consider your life as being a set of unknown parameters caused to come together by a set of circumstances you know nothing about. You find yourself in a mix of sensory impressions and situations brought into being by the similar experience of others just like you, all facing the same set of factors that for them represent their own lives. That situation may be poised to become something other than what it is, but what it will become for you is determined by your attitude.

Are you open to the possibility of something massive happening, are you open at all? Or have you become weary and beaten by an unkind world? How you perceive it is determined by you, there are no conspiracies, no networks of ignominy out to confound you. There is only the Universe, an objective state of being and the fact that you have a life within it - you are in a state of animate engagement.

Attitude is a stream from which you may always draw sustenance, it is a refreshing agency within all our lives if we so choose or it can be an exclusion zone. As a self defining individual, the choice is there for you to make.

Simplicity is closer to the truth

What does your brain love to do? Do you give it time to do those things? Brains sometimes get convoluted, they become a bit smart, sophisticated and they can lose their way in the huge scheme we are a part of. Remind them that it’s actually very simple.

The fabric of our lives an undeniably complex assembly of causes and events, arisings, structures, assembles comings and goings. We interact with things, we engage with things, we participate in a theatre of exchanges and who we are is the aggregate of all those happenings. It is, therefore, eminently reasonable within all this to perceive it as a complex and extremely sophisticated cascade. It is, but that will keep you for ever on the outside of it, spun off like a child trying to jump on a whirling merry-go-round.

At the core of the merry-go-round there is stillness. A tranquility that pervades all other states and represents the canvas upon which the complexity of our lives is daubed. This is where to be. Be in the stillness, where all things are simple, donot allow yourself to become excommunicated from the true substance of creation and live on the periphery of things. The periphery is always chaos driven by the collective ignorance of those who have placed themselves there. The curious thing being that they are ignorant of their plight.

In this place all manner of strange and peculiar things can come about, hence the saying, ‘in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.’ Keep it oh so simple, stay at the core of things and your returns will be far more rewarding and sustainable.